unshired en · ADJ
Etymology
From un- + shired.
Meanings
-
(Ireland, UK, not-comparable) Not shired, not constituted into counties; (by extension) ungoverned.
The young giant, Hugh Maguire, may have been to the Castle to complain of Miler’s hounds, for he had already written a complaint of such doings on the part of that mighty southern pluralist, who went about in armour like a man of war, and had his life-guard like the chief of an unshired country.
1897, Standish O’Grady, The Flight of the Eagle, pages 82–3:Connacht, and Ulster apart from the two ancient counties, were still unshired, still outside the normal action of the Dublin administration.
1940, T. W. Moody, “The Irish Parliament under Elizabeth and James I: A General Survey”, in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, volume 45, →JSTOR, page 44:The last years of Rufus’s reign were critical in the assertion of Anglo-Norman, and specifically royal, control over the unshired area of what we know as England north of the Ribble in the west and the Tees in the east.
2000, R. R. Davies, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles, 1093–1343, →ISBN, page 5: